Where will the money come from...

"Bill Kambic" wrote in message ...
"s.p.i." wrote in message

All the arguments posited here about why DARPA's FALCON project will
never supplant aircraft carriers remind me so much of the "Gun Club"
arguments AGAINST carriers 70+ years ago.

No, not really. Even with a carrier of the era (much less a BB) you had to
get "up close and personal" with your potential target.

Sure they do. Not in any specific technical aspect, but in the tenor
and tone of, "Its the way its always been and there is no improving on
the status quo...These new systems are inferior or too
outlandish...etc."
But don't believe me. Check out what this USNA academic has to say on
the matter:
http://web.mit.edu/13a/100th/mit13a.pdf

Some facts have been studiously avoided:

1. Carriers CANNOT operate without landbased support IN THEATER today.
Sad but True. That ability, which never really existed fully but was
better 40 years ago than today, has been squandered to pay for a
series of obsolescent short legged fighters. Those big wing tankers
that made carrier strikes possible in recent times didn't come from
the ether. Niether did the essential ELINT/SIGINT support. They didn't
come from CONUS either. Nobody seems to want to talk about how carrier
air was forced to hot pit on ingress and stash their ordnance ashore
to get back to the boat in this last conflict.

Not being real current (and not being a Strike type) I won't comment on
this.
And you too, Mr. Kambic, have have studiously avoided these odious
facts.

That AOE gets its fuel(and FFV and various other sundries as well)
from where? A CVBGs enourmously expensive-and vulnerable-logistics
train is a dirty little secret.

Oh, poppycock.
You are right about an AOE in for a brief port visit not being as
intrusive as air ops at Thumrait or some such. But the ship still must
make those visits and those visits are at the whim of a host country.
I know there are more components, but a disabled AOE represents at
least short term single point of failure for a CVBG. After three days
or so gas begins to get skosh in sustained ops even on the nukes...and
don't forget about the small boys.


Bottom line is a carrier is now just about as beholden to host nation
basing rights in order to remain viable as any AEF is.

No, not even close. The CVBG, by definition, has NO host country. It may
draw some stuff from a lot of countries, but what's new about that?

You are simply wrong about that. Much of the ISR must live in nearby
host countries because there are not enough parts on the boat. No
ingress without that capability. Ditto for the big wing tankers that
CVWs now rely on to get the job done. So, for a carrier to do its job,
its as dependent as an AEF on basing and overflight rights when it
comes time to head for the target in a great many scenarios because so
much of the essenttial support is landbased now.

The CV has always been a heavyweight boxer with a glass jaw. (Or maybe just
a "bleeder.") That's the nature of the beast. Yet if you look at some of
the catostrophic events of recent times (FORRESTAL fire comes to mind) air
ops were underway within 24 hrs., IIRC. So, while that glass jaw is still
there, it might be just a bit more tempered than you have indicated.

I think they may have gotten a cat or two to work so they could launch
aircraft to Cubi(hmmm...essential land base...?), but it took a year
to get the FID back to a state in which she could fight a war in any
realistic sense.
The Enterprise was a better example because they learned from the FIDs
misfortune and the potential for disaster was astutely and heroically
avoided in many important ways. Even so, despite the official spin,
she still had to spend a significant amount of time at Pearl before
she was ready to go again.
Carriers are perhaps the most vulnerable Capital ships devised. They
overcame the problem in WWII by producing way more decks than the
enemy could disable. That ain't gonna happen anymore.

3. I'm not saying that carriers need to be scrapped today. I am saying
that carriers are not any more immune to evolution in warfare than any
other weapons system has been. Its evolve or die boys.

Darwin lives. What else is new?
So thats why NAVAIR needs to be looking ahead instead of being so
enamored in the minutiae of the "The Boat"

I'm not expecting you Learned Denizens of R.A.M.N. to give me any
credence but you should give these folks some of your consideration:
http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/acof.pdf

I did not read this. After waiting two minutes for it to load I gave up.
Its worth the wait. Its entitled "Future of the Aircraft Carrier" by
the Defense Science Board whose members include the likes of Stan
Arthur and Don Pilling. They may know a thing or two about carriers.
You really shoud try to open it up.


Space based quick reaction weapons systems are on their way like it or
not. Call me a troll if you wish but DARPA is offering to spend some
big money on this FALCON project for a reason and the resulting
progeny of the effort will inevitably encroach on the carrier's
mission....and budget.

To quote Chairman Mao, "War is politics by other means." He didn't make it
up, but he did say it well.

Far too many of the current incarnation of McNamara's Whiz Kids have
forgotten this. A threat 300 miles overhead is just not real. Neither is
one 12,000 miles away. And we have not yet had to deal with the U.N. and
possible treaty violations with "space based weapons." And none of this
will be on line for at least a couple of decades, if then.

How many Iraqis or Al Qaeda saw any carriers. Are carriers any more
real on CNN than the MOAB is?

Time marches on.
As it does, NAVAIR can embrace these new technologies or be
marginalized into non existence.